Health equity

Abstract

Health equity implies the absence of unjust and preventable differences in health among groups of people. The Korean government has been promoting health equity policies by setting National Health Plan objectives for improving health equity, along with specific programs to achieve the targets by 2020. As shown by a World Health Organization commission, tackling the social determinants of health is essential to making progress in health equity. So far, there appear to be some hopeful trends in Korea toward a reduction in the social disparity in healthy life years according to the evaluation of National Health Plan 2020. Further effort is needed to continue measuring the problems and evaluating the associated actions, as well as strengthening policies and programs to overcome the weaknesses in the ability of the National Health Plan 2020 to improve health equity.